m_findlow

Title: Time by the sea
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 53 - Sea at fffc
Summary: Ianto finds himself waking up in a place that is both strange and familiar.

Ianto turned over in bed, listening to the sound of the thick duvet scrunching as he moved. He'd never noticed the way the duvet made a sound like that before. He shuffled again just to listen to it make the sound. It was a good sound, he decided. It was the sound of being snug in bed with nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be other than right here for as long as he wanted.

He looked across from the folds of rumpled duvet to where Jack was still sleeping, his hair all flopped to one side and sticking out at odd angles. He looked tired even as he lay there sleeping, and Ianto felt suddenly guilty for having made noise that might have woken him. He had earned the right to sleep as far as Ianto was concerned.

For Ianto however, it was like waking up out of some long, strange dream. The last few weeks - or had it been months? - had felt like a hazy blur. He couldn't tell one day from the next, nor how many there'd been. He felt as if he'd fallen asleep some long time ago, back when the world had been turned upside down and inside out. None of it had made any sense to him, but he knew that it wasn't the same place he'd remembered. Something was terribly wrong and broken about it and couldn't be fixed, so rather than face it he'd locked himself away in a protective bubble where it couldn't touch him. It was lucky he did. He already hurt more than he could have put into words. Much of what was wrong with the world had already sunk into his consciousness and was trying to eat him alive. It was awful and exhausting and just generally made him feel like never getting out of bed ever again.

He must have however, because he was somewhere else now. He'd fallen asleep on his sister's battered sofa and woken up here in a narrow two storey house by the seaside. Of course it hadn't quite happened like that. Jack had brought him here to this place. He'd taken Ianto away from the hectic city and all the horrors that it had put them through. He'd brought Ianto to this sleepy little seaside town to escape from it and to heal. The old him was still in there somewhere hidden behind the zombie who had occupied the bed with Jack for who knew how long. And today, for the first day, he felt himself beginning to re-emerge from the darkness. Little fragments had come back to him in the last few days in between, like little glimmers of hope, but this morning he felt awake, alive even, suddenly alert to all of life's little nuances.

Jack squirmed under the covers next to him and his eyes slowly opened to reveal their sparkling blue. He reached out a hand from under the covers and stroked Ianto's face without saying anything. It was a carefully considered motion, just as all of Jack's actions had been for so long now. He didn't want to undo whatever small progress they'd been making, or to force Ianto to do anything he didn't want to, lest he drive his lover deeper into that unreachable darkness. That wasn't to say he hadn't coaxed Ianto to do things - go for a stroll, eat a meal that required more than one piece of cutlery, sit and listen to Jack read him a book. Jack had been endlessly patient with him, more than anyone had a right to be, but not once had Jack given up on him.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ Jack replied, surprised to hear Ianto verbalise anything.

Ianto ran a finger along Jack's jaw, feeling the rough stubble that had grown there. It was more than one day's worth, more like a week given its coarseness. ‘You need a shave.’

‘You too,’ Jack said, a little smile on his lips.

‘Maybe after’, Ianto replied, pushing the duvet away. ‘I was thinking maybe we could go for a walk down along the sea?’

Jack's eyebrows disappeared into his floppy, rumpled hair. ‘A walk? You want to go for a walk?’

‘I feel…’ He didn't know how he felt. Just feeling anything was strange and new. ‘I don't think I've really taken much in from our walks so far. All that lovely seaside and I haven't enjoyed any of it yet. Neither have you unless I'm wrong.’

Jack's face was a mixture of joy and sadness intermingled. ‘Every day I pray I'll take you down to the shore and find you there waiting for me.’

‘I've always been here, waiting for you.’

Jack stroked his face again. ‘I was scared I was going to lose you forever.’

‘Never. So? A walk?’

‘Before breakfast?’

‘Maybe we might find somewhere for breakfast along the way.’

Jack leaned forward and kissed him. ‘I'm all yours.’

They dressed quickly and crossed the street, stepping out onto the sand. Jack's hand was intertwined with his own and Ianto sucked in a deep breath of sea air. It really was lovely out here even in the cool breeze, unshowered and unshaven as they were, just a pair of scruffy early morning beachwalkers. He heard the gulls squawking, felt his shoes sink into the sand and heard every last wave roll up against the shore. It was a sensory overload, life in full technicolor. He stopped and just stood there.

Jack stopped with him. ‘You okay?’

‘Just a lot more to take in than I thought. Everything has been such a blur until today.’

Jack squeezed his hand. ‘It's okay. One day at a time. As many walks along the sea as it takes until you feel okay again.’

‘I like it here,’ Ianto confessed. It was sleepy and slow and a million miles away from his old life of chaos.

‘I never said we had to leave,’ Jack said. ‘Let's just take it slow.’